The incomprehensible audacity of using bailout money for bonus payments to employees of failing companies only exceeds the incomprehensible audacity of bonus payments to employees of failing companies in the first place. The rationale for retaining valuable employees in this crisis environment is equally absurd. Where are they going to defect to? Lehman Brothers? AIG? Fannie Mae?
How long can the government hope to keep this parking lot bailout carnival going? In the 1930s, public works programs made a difference in the economy. World War II has sometimes been claimed as the real solution to the Great Depression, which may or may not be true, but either way, George Bush already made our war, which only distracted us from what should have been the real issues and contributed to the economic crisis instead of alleviating it, so war as an economic solution doesn’t look hopeful this time around, leaving us with the more benevolent domestic approach.
The argument that we still aren’t socialist is nuts. Banks that aren’t “troubled,” are of course whining that they are being discriminated against for their prudent management, which is true in principle, but as they know well enough, and the reason they aren’t whining louder, is that failure of the lunatic fringe would create an economic vacuum eventually threatening to suffocate even the most conservative financial operations. Perhaps the result would only be the equivalent of the 1930’s, in which a small portion of the population continued to possess great wealth while a much larger portion struggled desperately, but why the general population tolerated that condition at the time is sort of a mystery in itself except that the thirties may have been more hopeful, because there is a crucial difference. In the thirties, the government was not yet saddled with trillions of dollars of debt from decades of cold war competition and general bad management.
The savings and loan failures of Reagan era deregulation precipitated a financial crisis at the time, but it was headed off by another crucial difference, the advent of the information technology revolution, equivalent to or exceeding the economic effects of steam power, railroads, chemistry, electricity, and wireless communication. The IT industrial revolution produced a huge new global economic enterprise that didn’t begin to deflate until the dotcom collapse at the advent of the new millenium, while the economic momentum continued to sustain the Iraq war and residential construction until the saturated market at home and the lack of encouragement for opportunities in developing economic markets left the financial community without any realistic alternatives except reality, and Reagan’s other shoe finally dropped on us.
The U.S. has not used up its capital resources, either financial or psychological, and to a larger extent the entire world still has a vested interest in US economic viability, but we’re running out of options, and without some kind of general economic production on the scale of IT development, there will be no revival. Where’s that going to come from? Space exploration? Environmetnal restoration? Maybe, but where are you going to get that kind of consensus?
In the meantime, here’s what we need to do. The laws and services that make Accumulation of wealth possible depend on cooperation and participation of the entire society, not just on individual enterprise. We’re all in this together. The government should create a general fund. Any individual net worth of more than a billion dollars should be collected and contributed to the fund. To paraphrase Muhammed Ali, if you can’t live on a billion dollars, you can’t live on nothin’. We’ll allow a half a billion per individual for wiggle room. Income tax will be increased, not decreased. Everybody with jobs and/or money is going to contribute something. If this is not to your liking, then just go live somewhere with an economy and laws that suit you better. Go to Iceland.
In the long run, Iraq and the Middle East may achieve stability, although it’s hard to see how the alternative of not invading Iraq could have been much worse. As a matter of both capability and vision, George Bush has been a disaster. The government can intervene effectively as long as the global investment community on which we depend continues to consider the U.S. a good and necessary risk, but without the reassurance of either intense national commitment or revived economic activity, or both, how long can we keep that perception going? How long can you hold your breath?
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Arguing at the Level of the Conservative Bogey Woman (annotated)
I can’t get enough of Anne Coulter (Actually, it didn’t take much). Her writing is like the low-cut dresses she wears in publicity photos. There doesn’t appear to be much worth either concealing or revealing. (This is a misleading argument strategy sometimes called False Comparison, although if you’re really into fashions, there may be more truth in it than dr. Coulter would like to think about.) But dr. Coulter knows how to make an argument, and that means I don’t have to worry about thinking for myself (implying that anyone who agrees with Coulter is happy letting somebody else do their thinking for them). There is no doubt about who the bad guys are. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28524234/ (dr. with a small d implies that Coulter lacks both credentials and intellectual stature without any effort on my part to substantiate either one.)
In argument there are other misleading rhetorical strategies, like Ad Hominem, which kind of means suggesting somebody is wrong because they look scary in a low dress instead of making a substantive reply to the argument. Another one is called Poisoning the Well. Poisoning the Well more or less means assuming the truth of conditions without any information, such as the assumption that liberals are bad guys. The first sentence in the excerpt from Coulter’s book explains that liberals make up pretend victims like Cesar Borja (the retired NYC cop chosen by Hillary Clinton as the poster child for 9/11 emergency services) to crank up sympathy for their cause, very similar to John McCain and Joe the Plumber, but palin’ by comparison (a pun alluding to McCain’s vice-presidential candidate).
There is another misleading rhetorical strategy called Oversimplification. Oversimplification would be like dr. Coulter making selective remarks about the two politicians with connections to discrimination. One of the politicians might never have expressed any regret about discrimination and might have only refrained from openly practicing discrimination because it could mean jail time. The other might have publicly expressed regret for any association with discrimination and left a discriminatory organization because he thought the people in the organization were crazy, but oversimplification only takes into account that both politicians had connections to discrimination, and are therefore equal. That’s what I like about dr. Coulter. She can use a misleading rhetorical strategy per paragraph, and like her heroes, George Bush and Karl Rove, she is proud of it (implying that she deliberately uses misleading strategies).
If you want to talk about deceptive seminal imagery, let’s talk about Weapons of Mass Destruction instead of NYC Emergency Services, but seriously, folks, let’s be frank, ‘n forget all the propaganda extremes on both sides (another pun, this one alluding to the senatorial candidate who previously wrote a book commenting on, among other things, Anne Coulter’s misleading rhetoric). Suppose for the sake of argument, that Cesar Borja is a fraud and Hillary Clinton knew it. The idea was, what? Federal funding for New York City emergency workers? Oh my gawd, there’s a cause we wouldn’t want to accidentally contribute to. We need far too much of that money to blow up things in Iraq. (That’s a misleading rhetorical strategy called Ad Populum, which means connecting the argument to a well-known issue that inspires either common support or common opposition, but this isn’t sensible, or even intellectual. This is satire, or at least sarcasm, so I can get away with it.)(Also implying that intellect doesn’t necessarily make sense.)
And finally, I reluctantly (nothing reluctant about it at all) point out that regardless of any moral issues and misleading arguments involved, regardless of how pathetically pandering and perverse liberal ideology may be, it’s palin’ (ibid., a Latinate abbreviation meaning see the previous related reference) by comparison to the fraud and larceny perpetrated by corporate banking and other pillars of conservative finance that did not benefit anyone except corporate executives. Bernie Madoff, former NASDAQ chairman, CEO of an investment firm renowned for successfully cautious management practices, parlayed Reagan financial deregulation (implying that Reagan is responsible for current economic problems, which he is, which is in itself an oversimplification) into the most fantastic Ponzi scheme since the French monarchy (suggesting that conservative economics reflect aristocratic arrogance), and “made off” with enough money from investors to supplement New York City Emergency Services for a hundred years. (What’s in a name?)
The only trouble is, he didn’t give it to New York City Emergency Services. Nobody knows what he did with it exactly. While dr. Anne Coulter was busy complaining about misleading liberal political strategies, conservatives were out there making a real difference in the real world (implying that yeah, they made a difference, but a negative difference). None of your petty, hypocritical, grand-standing for conservatives. By gawd, when conservatives rip somebody off, they do it right. (A misleading rhetorical strategy implying that all members of a group behave the same.) They’ve got the liberals beat again, and so I congratulate dr. Coulter for making a point in the best conservative tradition, clearly, cleverly and completely bogus. (And I congratulate myself for applying the same strategy. I may not be better, but at least I’m as bad, even if I'm not syndicated.)
And just as an aside on Coulter’s NBC interview, I’m equally appreciative of the brilliant performance by George Bush in the White House (if you’re that fond of dancing), but an economy spiraling into collapse is a funny idea of keeping the country safe. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28537291/ On the other hand, the economy isn't an issue for Coulter, so maybe she's referring to how George and Laura have been champions of free speech.
Here's thinking for you.
Iffy
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Blasted by the Light
About half a mile from my house, I come to the light where the exit from my ghetto subdivision intersects a major cross-street. If the light is green, I go. If the light is red, I stop. If the light is yellow, I probably speed up like mad, hoping to squeak through, but that doesn’t happen often. With a perverse will of its own, it deliberately chooses to turn red according to what causes the most aggravation. Basically, it turns red when it sees me coming.
The response produces a pattern of behavior that amuses it, and so it continues to perform adversely. The light is green. The light waits. I approach the intersection. The light turns yellow. There is still hope. I accelerate. At the last possible point for any rational potential to legally enter the intersection, the light turns red. It then pauses in derision, all traffic from all directions momentarily suspended to contemplate the indignity of my defeat while it savours the grandeur of victory and the affirmation of power. All the civilized world pauses and ha-has my reluctance to collide with cross traffic and incur the willingness of law enforcement to commit acts of imposition on my personal freedom.
The tyranny of this traffic light has a statistical kind of validity. I have had numerous opportunities to sit and observe the complete cycle. 90 seconds for the traffic on the main street. 20 seconds for the left turn out of the through street from the other direction, and 10 seconds for exit from my subdivision. Out of the 120-second cycle, 10 seconds barely represents 8%. From a strictly empirical quantitative view on the subdivision side of the light, the light remains red 92% of the time, perhaps even a little more, depending on how the intervening yellow plays out, but does that mean I should miss the green cycle by less than a second 100% of the time? I don’t think so. There is an adverse power of the universe at work here.
Despite the evil nature of this particular traffic light, however, like Republicans, it serves a social function for which I must grudgingly acknowledge some gratitude. Without the traffic light, I might never leave my subdivision at all. During the last hurricane, for instance, a somewhat bemused law enforcement officer described stopping a driver going seventy miles an hour along the main road through intersections at which the lights were out.
Technically such intersections should be considered four-way stops, yet even in emergencies, the momentum of the major thoroughfare seems to overwhelm the public interest in caution. The force of the flow sweeps aside the interesests of the intersecting side streets, and the need for more obvious enforcement of the conventions becomes apparent. Unchecked, the path most traveled becomes the path of intimidation, and the bullies prevail.
But in a Democracy, even bullies proceed along paths prepared for them by the operation of social contract, a complete system of agreement and controls. There would be no seventy-mile-an-hour violations through native sand-pine wilderness and swamp. Only the existence of multiple lanes of pavement enables such carefree excess. In fact, anyone who stops at a stoplight, anyone who uses a public road, anyone who goes where they want and does what they want benefits from an agreement to join together in public interest, a social contract. Anyone who uses a public road is a socialist. Anyone who uses a public road takes a handout.
You can make whatever arguments you want about free enterprise and individual responsibility. Those are good things to the extent that they encourage self-actualization and constructive activity, but as recent economic failures have finally made painfully apparent, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, and J.K. Rowling can only accumulate vast wealth because the economic storms are controlled by complex systems of communication and transportation in which their products can flourish. In a Democratic society, without universal participation, they are nothing, and the readiness of rough men to commit violent acts on their behalf that serves as law enforcement in the global economy, while necessary, is overrated.
For whatever reasons, there are people in the world, and Sadam Hussein was one of them, who understand only violence, but do we want traffic lights with attitudes? The readiness and willingness to commit acts of violence is vastly different from the commission of violent acts willy-nilly. Like the light at my intersection, the operation of violence takes on a perverse attitude of its own, like a traffic light that operates entirely at random, or not at all. Indiscriminate violence, or even worse, poorly considered violence, therefore defeats its own purpose.
The response produces a pattern of behavior that amuses it, and so it continues to perform adversely. The light is green. The light waits. I approach the intersection. The light turns yellow. There is still hope. I accelerate. At the last possible point for any rational potential to legally enter the intersection, the light turns red. It then pauses in derision, all traffic from all directions momentarily suspended to contemplate the indignity of my defeat while it savours the grandeur of victory and the affirmation of power. All the civilized world pauses and ha-has my reluctance to collide with cross traffic and incur the willingness of law enforcement to commit acts of imposition on my personal freedom.
The tyranny of this traffic light has a statistical kind of validity. I have had numerous opportunities to sit and observe the complete cycle. 90 seconds for the traffic on the main street. 20 seconds for the left turn out of the through street from the other direction, and 10 seconds for exit from my subdivision. Out of the 120-second cycle, 10 seconds barely represents 8%. From a strictly empirical quantitative view on the subdivision side of the light, the light remains red 92% of the time, perhaps even a little more, depending on how the intervening yellow plays out, but does that mean I should miss the green cycle by less than a second 100% of the time? I don’t think so. There is an adverse power of the universe at work here.
Despite the evil nature of this particular traffic light, however, like Republicans, it serves a social function for which I must grudgingly acknowledge some gratitude. Without the traffic light, I might never leave my subdivision at all. During the last hurricane, for instance, a somewhat bemused law enforcement officer described stopping a driver going seventy miles an hour along the main road through intersections at which the lights were out.
Technically such intersections should be considered four-way stops, yet even in emergencies, the momentum of the major thoroughfare seems to overwhelm the public interest in caution. The force of the flow sweeps aside the interesests of the intersecting side streets, and the need for more obvious enforcement of the conventions becomes apparent. Unchecked, the path most traveled becomes the path of intimidation, and the bullies prevail.
But in a Democracy, even bullies proceed along paths prepared for them by the operation of social contract, a complete system of agreement and controls. There would be no seventy-mile-an-hour violations through native sand-pine wilderness and swamp. Only the existence of multiple lanes of pavement enables such carefree excess. In fact, anyone who stops at a stoplight, anyone who uses a public road, anyone who goes where they want and does what they want benefits from an agreement to join together in public interest, a social contract. Anyone who uses a public road is a socialist. Anyone who uses a public road takes a handout.
You can make whatever arguments you want about free enterprise and individual responsibility. Those are good things to the extent that they encourage self-actualization and constructive activity, but as recent economic failures have finally made painfully apparent, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, and J.K. Rowling can only accumulate vast wealth because the economic storms are controlled by complex systems of communication and transportation in which their products can flourish. In a Democratic society, without universal participation, they are nothing, and the readiness of rough men to commit violent acts on their behalf that serves as law enforcement in the global economy, while necessary, is overrated.
For whatever reasons, there are people in the world, and Sadam Hussein was one of them, who understand only violence, but do we want traffic lights with attitudes? The readiness and willingness to commit acts of violence is vastly different from the commission of violent acts willy-nilly. Like the light at my intersection, the operation of violence takes on a perverse attitude of its own, like a traffic light that operates entirely at random, or not at all. Indiscriminate violence, or even worse, poorly considered violence, therefore defeats its own purpose.
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